


Wherein Pete Befriends a Cow

by ermengarde



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:21:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22120207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ermengarde/pseuds/ermengarde
Summary: Patrick is, seriously, going to murder Pete. He is going to push him and his stupid orange jacket and his stupid happy grin down the side of a mountain and his stupid body is going to get washed out to sea and eaten by mosquitos.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 14





	Wherein Pete Befriends a Cow

**Author's Note:**

> For K, who always encourages me to make up stories, including about the poor folk who happen to be in our periphery as we make our way through the world. <3

Patrick is, seriously, going to murder Pete. He is going to push him and his stupid orange jacket and his stupid happy grin down the side of a mountain and his stupid body is going to get washed out to sea and eaten by mosquitos.. or, no, _midges_ , that's what the man at the bar called them. Tiny biting fuckers. 

Let's go on vacation, Pete had said. It'll be _fun_ Pete had said. You won't even get sunburned because we'll go to the land of your people, Pete had said. 

Pete is an _idiot_.

"My family's from _Ireland_!" Patrick yells up the hill in the rain as a car drives past him and looks sympathetically at the water dripping off the brim of his hat. "They have pubs in Ireland, indoor pubs and warm and..." He mutters, before giving up and closing his mouth so more water won't get in. He puts his head down and trudges up the steep, narrow road, trying to ignore the fact that the downpour they are _hiking_ in is turning the surface into a river. 

It had all started out okay, like, Patrick has long since learned not to trust Pete to organise _any_ thing, so he'd checked their airline reservations... and their train reservations, and then their _ferry_ reservations, and he'd also checked out their cottage to be sure that it was, actually, a cottage that you could book and stay in, but what he hadn't checked out was what there was for entertainment. 

He really wishes that he'd checked out what there was to do for entertainment, because it turns out that there aren't any ubers on the island they're on. They had to catch a bus to get to their cottage, and the cottage is about as far as it is possible to get from the main attractions _and_ it's at the bottom of a hill. 

It's not that Patrick hates hiking or anything, it's just that it's rained since they arrived. Constantly. And once they've stared at the sea (it's too damn cold to actually _go in_ ), skimmed a couple of stones (which, incidentally, _sucks_ when you can't see because your glasses are covered in rain), and sat in the pub for four days (thank fuck there is a pub at the bottom of their hill with them, and thank fuck it does food), well, they kind of _have_ to go hiking, because if they don't do something different, then Patrick is going to murder Pete.

Of course, by the time they get slightly over half way up the hill, and the rain has turned the road into an actual river, and Patrick's pretty sure that he's going to murder Pete anyway. It's just a case of where he's going to hide his body, and his evil grinning face.

By the time they get to the top of the hill (or at least, to the top of the hill on the road, this island is all fucking hill, Patrick is pretty sure that there isn't a _top_ ) Patrick is soaked to the skin, too hot and too cold at the same time and he hasn't been able to see clearly for at least half an hour. He didn't even know that it was possible to be both dripping with sweat and unable to feel his fingers and toes because of the cold. 

"Pete. Peeeeeeeeeeeeete. Pete! Stop!" Patrick yells at Pete's back. He''s four hundred percent done with this shit.

Pete practically skips back to him. Patrick is definitely going to murder him. 

"Hey Pattycakes, did you want to go into the church?" Pete gestures at a large gray blob on the other side of the green blob behind him.

Into sounds good. Into sounds _dry_. Patrick nods.

The church is tiny, and smells like dust and furniture polish, but it is dry. Patrick stands, dripping, in the entryway, he doesn't want to get the carpet all wet. Pete doesn't seem to care about such petty concerns, so Patrick just watches as he flits around the church looking at stained glass windows and the wooden carved pulpit. Now that they've stopped moving Patrick's starting to get really cold. 

"Hey, did you know that this church was built for two families? Like, all this shit for _two_ families." Pete calls over from a display board down the side.

Patrick thinks back to the costume dramas his mom used to watch, "Like, just their family, or their family and everyone who worked on their farms or whatever?" It has to have been the farm, thing, right? That's all there is to fucking do here.

Pete reads more of the board. "Nuh, says here the McMillans were fishermen. The Glens don't seem to have had a job." 

Patrick shudders. Farming would suck in the rain, but at least things seem to grow well here... The ocean had looked so wild and unforgiving. There are memorial stones all around the walls of this church and Patrick feels chilled to the bone. "What are we going to do now, Pete?" He asks, wanting to get out of this place with its sad reminders. 

Pete pulls his stupid fucking map case out from where he has it zipped under his jacket. It's plastic, with a string that he can hang around his neck, and Pete's got one of those detailed British maps with, like, gradient lines in it. It should be pretty easy to work out where they are - the whole island only has, like, 5 roads on it - but Patrick tried to read it yesterday and he couldn't even work out where their cottage was.

"Oh, hey, there's supposed to be a _tea room_ just along the road here. A _Tea Room_ 'Trick. How fucking amazing is that. We can have a cup of tea and a scone" Pete ends up in a terrible mock-British accent. Patrick is grateful that there's no one around to hear him. Patrick is going to be the only Pete-murderer around here.

There isn't a tea room just along the road. There's fucking _nothing_ along the road, unless you count more rain, spiky bushes, brown fern things and a group of very curious, very _large_ hairy cows as something. Patrick had always filed cows in at the same kind of size as horses, but these cows are... they're like the mega fauna of cows. The fence around their field has barbed wire along the top, but there's no way that the cows would be held back by that if they didn't want to be. Patrick tries not to make eye contact through his smeary, wet glasses.

Pete, of course, thinks the cows are _amazing_. He keeps stopping to take videos of them, and of Patrick, and Patrick is totally stealing his phone before they get somewhere with a signal so that he can delete everything. 

Maybe he can get one of the cows to eat Pete, Patrick thinks darkly as he trudges on through the rain.

There isn't any tea room, at least not within an hour's walk, but they do arrive at somewhere called a _creamery_ , which apparently make cheese. There's a visitor experience. Patrick wonders idly if the milk, _cream_? Comes from the cows Pete wanted to be friends with. 

The visitor experience just says the milk comes from _island cows_ , which could mean just about anything, but Patrick chooses to assume that it's Pete's friends. Other than a single fact board, there's a window overlooking where the actual cheese is made and a box of kid's coloring sheets. There is also a _lot_ of cheese on sale. There doesn't seem to be anyone there to sell it, so Patrick takes a handful of the samples to eat while no one's watching... the cheese is sharp and salty and makes his mouth water. So good. Patrick definitely has to buy some, if someone ever comes to man the store. There's a sign at the main counter that says they only take cash, and Patrick checks his pockets to see if he's got any physical money, feeling like he's travelled back in time.

Patrick finds a very wet £20 note in his jeans. Wet, but totally valid cheese-buying currency. Pete's started coloring in a picture of a cow which is... well it's very Pete to be honest, and at least it's keeping him quiet. Patrick stands and drips next to the cheese.

Pete and Patrick both jump when a man in white plastic boots, a white coat and a white hat comes in through a side door. 

"Good Morning, you wanting some cheese?" The man nods at the display Patrick's standing next to.

"Yes, thank you." Patrick smiles and picks some up. 

"Good choice." The man smiles at Patrick, and takes the cheese from him. "You saw that we only take cash payments here, right? Those card things need decent internet, and the cows keep knocking over the cabinet. It's easier just not bothering."

Patrick knows that those were all words, but they don't make any sense at all other than confirming the fact that cows are terrifying, so he just nods and proffers his £20 note. 

Pete talks to the man and finds out where the tea room is, and how to get the bus back to their cottage. The man digs out a paper timetable for Pete and also marks where their cottage, the creamery and the tea room are on Pete's map. When they get back outside it's even stopped raining. Apparently cheese makes everything better. 

The tea room is... quite a long hike, and it may have stopped raining, but Patrick's legs are still wet and uncomfortable. The outside of the building is kind of unprepossessing, like something you might find full of rusting machinery out the back of a farm, and when they go inside it looks kind of run down, full of mismatched, old furniture, in a way that speaks of little care for looks and no money rather than instagram-flavored artistry, but there's a table full of so many different kind of cake and it all looks _amazing_ , and there's a smell of coffee that warms Patrick right down to his toes. 

Pete insists that Patrick finds a table and Pete will get them lunch, so Patrick finds a little table near an ancient and slightly terrifying looking gas heater and sits down. It's a relief to take off his jacket, and to bask in the warmth of the blue flames. He's pretty sure that he's going to give off steam. 

It takes _ages_ for Pete to come to the table, and he's carrying an overloaded tray when he does. "So, I got lentil soup and these things that look like biscuits but are called cheese scones? The lady said that they're really good together, and there's butter from the cheese place, and I got you coffee and some of the carrot cake and the tiffin because they were small slices and also the malteser cake because it has _whoppers_ on it and how could I not?"

Patrick makes a note to check that Pete's doing okay with his med scheduling over the time change, because he sounds a little manic, but maybe it's just a contact high from all the sugar. "Soup sounds great, Pete. Sounds _warm_."

Pete grins at him. "The scones are warm, too."

The soup is _delicious_. Thick, and wholesome and homemade tasting, and it warms Patrick up from the inside. The scones are warm and fluffy and soft in the middle and the butter melts into golden pools when he spreads it on. He almost moans with the overwhelming pleasure of it, and that's before he even gets to the coffee and cake. Patrick wonders if it's possible to live in this unassuming little hall with it's antique heater and its amazing food, because the thought of leaving makes him sad.

Pete agrees that getting a bus home makes _much_ more sense, even if Patrick's jeans are nearly dry now, and that now they have a timetable Patrick can start to _plan_ things. The woman who comes to clear their soup bowls and check if they want more coffee even says that it's due to be dry and sunny tomorrow, at least for a little while. 

Patrick figures that even if it does rain, then maybe the rain will make the bog behind the tearoom that's marked on the map will get wet enough so that he can drown Pete in it.


End file.
